While an 8-year-old died in Border Patrol custody last month, officials at the Texas detention center where she was held complained of the facility’s “overuse of hospitalization,” according to an internal report obtained by The Times.

Anadith Danay Reyes Ivarez, who suffered from sickle cell disease and heart disease, had developed a fever of 101.8 degrees during the five days she was in the detention center in Donna, Texas.

On May 14, two days before Department of Homeland Security investigators arrived to inspect conditions at Donna, Anadith tested positive for the flu and was transferred to a facility in Harlingen, Texas, designed to detain migrants with communicable diseases. to hold.

Anadith’s fever rose to 104.9 and she was taken to a hospital on May 17, where she died that day. A nurse at the Harlingen facility had rejected Anadith’s mother’s initial requests for an ambulance or a hospital visit on the day the girl died, according to a DHS statement two weeks later.

“Given her history of very significant medical problems, this patient should have been sent to a hospital as soon as she developed a fever and other symptoms,” says Dr. Parveen Parmar, an emergency medicine physician and professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, wrote in an email to The Times. “It’s hard to predict what might have happened, but she certainly had a much better chance of survival if she had received this timely care.”

Border police officers’ complaints about hospitalization procedures were contained in two memos from the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and obtained by The Times. The relatively new oversight agency is tasked with reviewing conditions within Homeland Security’s expanded detention system. The memos, intended for agency leadership, detailed conditions at many facilities along the southern border this spring.

The first report, dated May 15, describes a spread of diarrhea among children and some overcrowding problems at a detention center in Laredo. The second report, dated May 22, describes problems with medical care at the Donna facility.

The reports come at a time of intense tension on the nations’ detention system

southern

The border skyrocketed in the week leading up to the May 11 expiry of Title 42, the public health measure that allowed border agents to quickly return migrants. At one point that week, the agency held

more than

28,000 migrants in facilities at the border far beyond capacity.

Both documents contain a comment that they reflect the firm’s initial observations and have not been verified and confirmed according to the firm’s usual procedures.

A third internal DHS document, dated June 8 and obtained by the Washington Post, found flaws in medical care along the border and called for an overhaul of the system.

Homeland Security officials provided general comments about the US immigration detention system, but did not provide on-the-record answers to specific questions about any of the reports The Times got their hands on.

According to the May 22 memo, Border Patrol officials complained about the quality of medical care at the Donna facility. Donna’s staff tended to send migrants to hospital for things that could easily be treated on the spot,” the researchers wrote.

For example, people with a fever are sent to the hospital instead of receiving fever-reducing medicines on the spot

,” they said.”

The migrants usually return to Donna with ibuprofen from the hospital and no fever.”

The oversight agency said that “it appears that Donna’s medical care issues are costing CBP

[U.S. Customs and Border Protection]

and the main contractor valuable staff time. CBP reported to me that they have had as many as 12 officers in the hospital at one time.

A source familiar with the report on Donna’s medical care and not authorized to speak on the record said in an email that the regulators’ description of the border patrol’s perspective on hospitalization was an observation that more people on site should be treated with the appropriate level of care as stipulated in the contract, rather than burdening the hospital and [Border Patrol] transport personnel needed for more emerging cases; such as those with pre-existing conditions.

According to the report, Border Guard officials’ complaints about Donna’s medical care were not limited to overuse of hospitalizations.

The institution’s management told investigators that a boy had been treated for third-degree burns

on the spot with readily available creams when he should have been hospitalized. He later had to be sent to a burn center.

In addition, the report noted complaints that medical s

taff in the facility, even though providing oxygen is a standard EMT function.

The report also passed on what it described as a misdiagnosis that led to overreactions at the facility. A nurse apparently diagnosed a person with a possible case of measles, the report said. Fortunately, this was not a correct diagnosis. Unfortunately, word of the diagnosis spread and fear reigned among staff and inmates until the information could be determined to be false.

Investigators also reported that minors at Donna’s were only checked if a problem was noticed and that some medical staff use Google translate on their private phones for interpreting services.

In answer, one

CBP Customs and border control

official said online translation tools are used in limited cases and are an example of how we use every tool available to ensure communication with all those in our custody.

CBP officials said they

now

prioritize the processing of families and medically vulnerable migrants and that families spend less time in detention as a result of the review. Doctors from the US Public Health Service have been deployed to border facilities to provide additional guidance and supervision, officials said.

CBP will continue to evaluate procedures, practices and equipment to ensure we protect those in our care

CBP

a spokesman said in a statement.

Border detention centers are not prepared for the complex problems they face, Parmar said.

These have become health systems without the resources to be health systems, she said. The system doesn’t have what they need to care for complex patients. There should be extensive review of cases, charts and external oversight to determine what could strengthen the system.